Turner Broadcasting Systems merged with
New Line Cinema and soon was successful with two blockbusters. Both
starred popular comedian Jim Carrey: The Mask (1994) and the
slapstick Dumb
and Dumber(1994). [Coincidentally, The Mask launched the career of then-unknown
Cameron Diaz.]
Carrey had started his career as a stand-up comic in Canadian clubs, after
which he brought his act to the Wayan Brothers' TV show In
Living Color in the early to mid-1990s as the wacky masochistic,
accident-prone Fire Marshal Bill. His irrepressible, extroverted rubber-faced
character headlined in a trio of films in 1994. Superstar
Carrey had also appeared in an earlier third popular hit in the same
calendar year - his breakout film: Warners' Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective (1994).

1994

The R-rated biopic-documentary Crumb (1994) sympathetically
portrayed counter-cultural, sex-obsessed cartoonist R. Crumb, known for
1960s-era underground comic books, the character of Mr. Natural, the
phrase: "Keep on Truckin'", Fritz the Cat (the character was
the inspiration for the first X-rated animated feature in Hollywood history
by writer/director Ralph Bakshi in 1972), and the cover art for Janis
Joplin's best-selling record Cheap Thrills.

1994

Disney's hit Christmas movie The Santa Clause (1994) was
the cross-over breakthrough film for TV star Tim Allen. Although Allen
had a criminal record and Disney was known for not hiring felons
or ex-cons, an exception was made. He continued
to work with Disney/Pixar as the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy
Story films,
and starred in two Santa Clause sequels in 2002 and 2006.

1994

Turner Classic Movies (TCM), a 24-hour commercial-free
network for programming classic films (mostly from the combined Turner and
Warner Bros. library of film greats), was launched.

1994

Writer/director
James Cameron's True Lies (1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
as a Bond-like secret agent, was a spy-adventure packed with special
effects, thrills, co-star Jamie Lee Curtis (at age 35) doing a sexy striptease,
and an exciting jet and car chase over the Florida Keys. Its production
budget eventually totaled $115 million, but it was able to gross $146
million (domestic) and $379 million (worldwide). It was the first film
with a budget to cross over $100 million. Later, Cameron's Titanic
(1997)
was also noteworthy for breaking the $200 million budget barrier. A sequel
was planned for 2002, but cancelled in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

1994

One of the first major video game theatrical adaptations,
the action film Street
Fighter (1994), with Jean-Claude Van Damme, was dedicated to co-star
Raul Julia, who died after the film was completed - it was his last theatrical
release. Van Damme had turned down the role of Johnny Cage in the more successful Mortal
Kombat (1995), to star in this film. It turned out to be negatively-criticized
and rated as one of the worst films ever made, although it was financially
successful - returning nearly three times its
$35 million budget with its worldwide box office tally ($99.4 million). It
was followed by the reboot: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
(2009).

1994

Director Jan de Bont's action-thriller
hit Speed (1994) starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock became
one of the most exhilarating and successful films of its kind. It won
two Academy Awards, Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing, and was
the 8th highest-grossing (domestic) film of the year, at $121 million.
The spectacular heart-pounding film helped to boost Reeves’ critical
rise in the 1990s, leading to later acclaimed roles in The Devil’s
Advocate (1997) and The
Matrix (1999). Reeves declined to appear in de Bont's sequel, Speed
2: Cruise Control (1997), to go on tour with
his band Dogstar. Jason Patrick was reteamed with Sandra Bullock - and
it was rated as one of the worst sequels of all time.

1994

Three of the most powerful, influential and
successful individuals in modern Hollywood -- director/producer Steven Spielberg,
the recently-departed Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and film and
music industry mogul David Geffen -- formed the film studio DreamWorks SKG.
(The SKG stood for the first letter of their last names.) It was the first new major studio in more than 50 years.

1994

The almost three-hour documentary Hoop Dreams (1994) followed
the aspirations of two hopeful, hard-working African-American high school
student athletes (from Chicago, Illinois) who dreamed to be professional
basketball players. Because the exceptional film was not nominated in
the category of Best Documentary Feature by the Academy, changes were
made in the nominating procedure for future years. It was also the all-time
top-grossing documentary film (until Michael Moore's Bowling for
Columbine (2002)).

Disney's first Broadway musical was Beauty and the Beast, based on its film version of Beauty and the Beast (1991).

1994

Disney became the first studio to gross more than $1 billion at the box office domestically in a single year, mostly due to the release of The Lion King (1994), although Pulp Fiction (1994) and November's The Santa Clause (1994) were also hits. The Lion King was the highest-grossing traditionally (hand-drawn) animated feature film in the US at the time - and in history. It was later surpassed at the box-office by Disney/Pixar's computer-animated Finding Nemo (2003). The Lion King was Disney's first film based upon an in-house original story, rather than upon a well-known
children's narrative. Its Hamlet-like story was beautifully animated, enhanced by a Hans Zimmer score, and contained songs by composer Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice.

1994

Disney's successful animated The Lion King (1994),
the # 2 highest-grossing (domestic) hit of the year, was
among the first feature-length film animations featuring many major stars'
voices for its characters. (Previously, there was only one big voice-name,
such as Robin Williams as the Genie in Aladdin (1992), or there
were unknowns who lent their voices to the characters.) With box-office
receipts of over $312 million, this film spurred a boom in animation
production and merchandising, and other animation production studios
besides Disney entered the picture.

1994

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) had eight theatrical re-releases (1944, 1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1983, 1987, and 1993), and then in late 1994, it was finally released on VHS home video (and laser disc) and sold 10 million copies in its first week of sale. After three weeks of availability, it sold over 17 million copies, and would soon surpass the all-time champ, Disney's Aladdin (with 24 million copies sold since its late-1993 release). It eventually sold 50 million copies worldwide, the best-selling cassette of all time. It was the last of the early Disney animated films released for home video, following Pinocchio
(1940), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Cinderella (1950). [Snow White was later released for the first time on DVD, in late 2001.]

1994

Disney's live-action film The Jungle Book (1994) was
the first Disney remake of an earlier animated feature film, The
Jungle Book (1967)..

1994

Best Picture winner Forrest Gump (1994) was the
top-grossing (domestic) film of the year, at almost $330 million. It
used revolutionary digital photo tricks to insert the film's main character
into archival historical footage with past Presidents (John F. Kennedy
and LBJ) and other situations. It would encourage the trend of physically
inserting actors into old existing footage, making it appear like the
characters were interacting with each other. Shortly afterwards, this
technique - which expanded to advertising commercials - controversially
presented dead stars hawking products (i.e., James Cagney and Louis Armstrong
appeared in Diet Coke ads, and John Wayne was in a Coors Light commercial).

1994

Tom Hanks won two consecutive Best Actor awards
(presented in ceremonies in 1994 and 1995) for Philadelphia (1993) and
for Forrest Gump (1994). He became the fifth performer
to win back-to-back acting Oscars, and only the second performer
to win consecutive Best Actor Oscars (the first was Spencer Tracy
in 1937-1938). Oscar-winning Hanks took a cut of Forrest Gump's profits
- reportedly 8% of the gross, which on top of his $20 million salary netted
him about $60 million.

1994

Director Oliver Stone's controversial work
on the media's exploitative precoccupation with violence by following the
path of two serial killers (Mickey and Mallory) on a murder spree, Natural
Born Killers (1994),
came under critical fire for its own graphic, on-screen violence. The controversial
film was accused of encouraging other violent acts such as the Columbine
School shooting.

1994

Roland Emmerich's Stargate (1994), a mixed critical
success, was
the first movie to ever have an official website. It told about a distant
world whose ruler was the powerful Egyptian god Ra (Jaye Davidson), and
whose alien slave people were the descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
It became an even greater hit on television, spawning the popular TV
series
Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007), the animated Stargate:
Infinity (2002-2003), two further live-action spin-offs (Stargate
Atlantis (2004-2009) and
SGU: Stargate Universe (2009-2011)), and two Stargate made-for-TV
movies.

1994

Kevin Smith's low-budget (about $30,000) comedy Clerks (1994), about two clerks/workers, went into general release after its successes at the Cannes and the Sundance Film Festivals. The cost of obtaining the rights to the soundtrack for the film was greater than the production costs for the entire film - a first in modern cinematic history. Although originally rated NC-17 (mostly because of its raunchy dialogue), it was re-rated as an R after Miramax appealed to the MPAA, and went on to become one of the most popular and successful comedy independent films of all time.

1994

Writer/director and B-movie fanatic Quentin Tarantino
delivered the non-formulaic and inventive hit Pulp
Fiction (1994) - an 'independent' film distributed
by Miramax, that featured guns, femmes fatales, deadly yet talkative
hit-men, and drugs. It brought new fame to star John Travolta (in an ensemble
cast) and a revolutionary script structure with its three interwoven (and
fragmented) stories told in non-linear order. In addition to revitalizing
the failing career of John Travolta, it kick-started the career of Samuel
L. Jackson as a lead actor. The
unpredictably time-shuffled, post-modern film with hip pop references,
winner of Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or, shocked with its hip combination
of violence, sex, drugs, and profanity (including 269 F-words).

1994

A Harvard School of Public Health study showed that violence occurred just as frequently in PG, PG-13, and R-rated films. The study was repeated a decade later, illustrating the existence of "ratings-creep", meaning that more risqué and violent scenes were being allowed in films rated G, PG, PG-13 and R than in the past. For example, The Santa Clause (1994) was rated PG, yet it had less sex and nudity, violence, gore and profanity than The Santa Clause 2 (2002), which was rated G.

1994

Ex-wife of former football player
and actor/sportscaster O. J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend
Ron Goldman were stabbed to death in June of 1994 outside Nicole's home
in Brentwood, California. Subsequently, Simpson was charged with two
counts of murder, but eventually acquitted in November 1995.

1994

The theatrical run of Il Postino (1994) in
New York City stretched for almost two years -- it was still in theaters
after the video release and its premium cable run.

1994

The $8.1 million judgment against actress Kim Basinger
for dropping out of the film Boxing Helena (1993) was overturned
by an appeals court that ruled the jury received improper and ambiguous
instructions. In March 1993, a Superior Court jury awarded that sum to
Main Line Pictures, the film's producers, which had sued Ms. Basinger.
She claimed that she objected to the script and nude scenes. The
film, about a surgeon who cut off the limbs of the woman he loved, was
released with Sherilyn Fenn replacing Basinger in the title role.

1994

SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound), a digital
sound-on-film format in which the digital information was optically printed
in two continuous strips along both edges of the 35 mm. film, was introduced
by Sony. The revolutionary system avoided the need for separate CD-ROM
soundtracks and synchronization codes. SDDS supported increased surround-sound
options by offering eight channels of sound.

1994

John Waters' crime spoof and dark satire on suburbia,
the R-rated Serial
Mom (1994) starred
Kathleen Turner as Beverly R. Sutphin, a caring and loving but serial-killing
suburbanite mother living in Baltimore. The homicidal yet virtuous homemaker
defended her family by killing those who offended or bothered her.
The body count reached a total of seven, with various unlikely lethal
methods involving a car, a fire poker, a pair of scissors, an
air conditioner, a telephone and even a leg of lamb.

1994

The TV series Insektors (1994) was the first completely computer-animated cartoon series to be broadcast on television. It told about two warring anthropomorphic tribes of insects (the Joyces vs. the Yuks). It first aired in France, and was then dubbed into English for US and UK television. Its appearance was only a few months before another completely-CG animated cartoon series was aired - the full-length Canadian action-adventure series called ReBoot.

1994

Director Jonathan Kaplan's feminist western Bad Girls
(1994) was the story of four prostitutes turned outlaws in the Old
West. The film's original director Tamra Davis was replaced a few weeks
into filming, and a completely new script was written with a new plot
and characters.

1994

Viacom Inc. won the lengthy bidding war and sealed
the purchase of the NY-based Paramount Communications Inc. for $9.75
billion - after its five-month battle with QVC Network Inc. Paramount's
holdings included Paramount Pictures, the Simon & Schuster
publishing house, Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers hockey
team and the Knicks basketball team.

1994

Legendary animator/cartoonist Walter Lantz died at the age of 94. The founder of Walter Lantz Productions, he had created the character of Woody Woodpecker (known for his staccato "huh hah hah HA ha" laugh) in the 1940s, and others including Oswald Rabbit, penguin Chilly Willy and Andy Panda. Lantz received an Honorary Academy Award in 1979 (at the ceremony honoring films of 1978) for "bringing joy and laughter to every part of the world through his unique animated motion pictures." The award was "presented" by Lantz's most famous creation, Woody Woodpecker, using combined live-action and animation.

1994

Iconic film-actor Burt Lancaster, one of the best American
actors of all time, died at the age of 80 from a heart attack. He had
appeared in every conceivable genre, including adventure films, swashbucklers,
comedies, and serious dramas. His sole Best Actor Academy Award Oscar
was for Elmer
Gantry (1960), although he was also nominated for From
Here to Eternity (1953), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962),
and Atlantic City (1981). As an independent film producer, he
was responsible for films such as Best Picture-winning Marty
(1955) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
His screen debut was in the film noir classic The
Killers (1946).